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When we learn to hear the Lord, we will hold our opinions while we stand firmly on His positions.

What do you think?  Does the Lord talk much?  Yes, He does.  He never stops talking to us.  But His talking much is not what you think. Even though the Lord is all knowing, He speaks to us with just a few words.  He doesn’t need to say much because He says only what needs to be said.

The Lord doesn’t need to talk much because He shares His position more than His opinion.  He doesn’t gossip. We should understand this, and we should be careful to hear Him when He offers His position on a thing.

There was a time when Jesus was transfigured before Peter, James and John.  Scripture says while all this was happening, Peter told the Lord, he and the others could build Him a tabernacle. Peter had an opinion about what they were seeing and what they should do.

While he was saying this, scripture says a voice was heard from heaven telling them, “This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased.  Hear Him.” Matthew 17:5. There is a lot of stuff going on today and times are hard. Some of us are attempting to change or to transform many things that cannot be changed. And many of us wonder what we should say or do.

When we do not hear a voice from heaven telling us what we should think, we get anxious about what is happening. Just like Peter, John and James, in our anxiety and in our righteousness we become restless. When we are restless about what we don’t understand, we want to share our opinions about how we believe everyone should act.

It is difficult to Hear the Lord when we are anxious to share our opinion about what we think. When the Lord commands us to hear Him, He is saying listen to Me before you ask others to listen to you.  He is saying hold your opinion until you know My position.  Hear Me.  He wants us to share His position more than He wants others to share our opinion.

Gossip is more than simply sharing something about others that is not for us to share.  Gossip is sharing an opinion about a person or thing designed to reflect poorly on that person or thing.  The Lord does not want us to gossip about the things that we face.

Listen to Him and you will find His position to be clear.  Learn to establish your position more than your opinion.  When you do this, you will find you are less likely to speak ill about a person who has simply done what you have been blessed not to do so far.

When we hear Him, it is then that we should speak of what we have heard. But anxiety, frustration and our sense of righteousness often causes us to stop and settle on what we believe should be happening. We want people to know that God is among us, and He sees all that is going on.

That is true.  But God does not use a person’s sin to make that person look bad or to make someone else look good. God has a position on the things we do but we have opinions about the things we do.  Let’s learn to quiet ourselves and to hear Him.

Sometimes, when we want to be heard, our opinions are more harmful than helpful to others.  The Lord does not need our help with what He wants to say and to do. He wants us to “Hear Him.”  Just become we can see no heavenly action, we should not be concerned if the Lord is still among us.  He is always with us.

We should be concerned if we are still with Him.  We should be concerned that we hear Him more.  When we hear Him”, we are able to be used by Him in ways of His choice and not our own.

Proverbs 17:27-28 says, “He who has knowledge spares his words, and a man of understanding is of a calm spirit.  Even a fool is counted wise when he holds his peace, and when he shuts his lips, he is considered perceptive.” Learn to hold your opinion about the sins of the world until you have learned to Hear Him. 

Our opinions will not be of any value and our witness will not be effective when we sound and act just like the people we speak of who may have stumbled. When God says to “Hear Him” He means we should be transfigured by what we hear from Him.

Learn to quiet your talk and hold your opinion so that you can Hear Him. When you do this your walk will be reflective of His talk and of His position.  Hear Him!

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

One of the reasons we don’t understand God is because we do not choose to live under His authorityy

I wrote the following message in 1992.  I am sharing it now because I want you to see the power of a never changing Word of God.  The message was right for 1992, and it is right for today.  Amazing!

“If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority.  John 7:17.”  Do we really desire as people to do the Will of God?  Have you ever asked yourself that question?  The world is filled with strife and contention.  Even among Christians and other people of God, there is dissension and contention. 

Why?  Because people do not sincerely desire to do God’s will.  Oh, we say we do, but our hearts are far from it.  We do just as the Jews of old did – they took Moses’s laws and decided which if any they would live by. We take the Word of God and treat it as if it is only a law or guideline for some situations in life.

The Word of God is not simply a law. It is the essence of God Himself, the Spirit of God, written out so that it is available to everyone – even nonbelievers.  We disbelieve God’s law because we never accept Him as an authority over our lives.  We do not readily see the authoritative connection we have to Him.  But Jesus says if you desire to do His will, then you shall know the Word of God and the authority of God over you.  God is the same for all people and all races. 

If we desire to do His will, He will reveal this to us and there will be peace within each of us.  You don’t have to wait for your neighbor to learn to accept this.  You do it first because it is what God requires of you individually not us collectively.  Get to know His authority over your life and you will be filled with peace unsurpassed.  PTL Who gives us peace with ourselves that we may be peace to others.

That was 1992.  So what about today?

Today we are very much like the people of old. They had one fundamental problem, and we have that problem today.  We say we want to do the Will of God, but we do not understand or accept that to do His Will we must be subject to His Will.

Back then the people questioned Jesus’ teaching, and they questioned its truth.  Today we do not readily accept the Truth of God’s Word especially when we believe it does not line up with how we view things. Jesus said then and He says now, if anyone really wants to do His will, they will be able to discern the Truth of His Word.

To be subject to His will we must place ourselves under His authority and under His Lordship.  When we learn to live under His authority, we learn to grow up and never to use His Word to justify what we want to say or to do.  God has a position on marriage.  We cannot know His position clearly unless we clearly place ourselves under His authority to do His will.

Let’s not question the Truth of the Word.  Let’s search for the Truth in the Word.  Let’s not say we want to do His will.  Let’s place ourselves under His authority so that we can more easily hear what He has to say to us.

In John 7:10-16 the people were confused at Jesus’s teaching and at who Jesus was. In John 7:17 Jesus tells them you cannot make sense of the Word; you cannot rightly discern what the Word is saying, and you cannot understand the Word unless you first have the desire to do God’s will.

The reason many of us never understand the Word of God is because we do not first have a desire to live under the authority of God to do His Will.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

Your desires are the things you want. Your will is the action you will take to have what you want.

Your desires and your will. That is my message today.

If you want more blessings in your life, it is important to understand the relationship between your desires and your will.  This is your talk and your walk.  Our desires are simply the things we want for our lives. Our wills then are degree of commitment we have that will lead us to act out our desires.

We have many examples in the Word that can help us see how to deal with our wills. Perhaps the best example is found in Jesus when He taught the disciples how to pray in Matthew 6:10.  In that prayer, Jesus tells us to say, “Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”

In this prayer Jesus is showing us that our desires should be that the will of God should be done everywhere on earth.  That is what we should all want.  Our wills then would take this desire a step further to make sure we do all that we can do to be a part of the will of God being fulfilled here on earth.

Jesus gets at our desires and our wills and our talk and our walk. Many of us have heard of or we may even say ourselves that God gives us free will.  There is no scripture that I know of specifically that speaks to us having something called free will.  I suppose what we mean is that we have the ability to choose to do what things we do, even those things we know that expressly come at us from the Lord.

We choose to say yes Lord, or we do not.  We choose to submit, or we do not. Our desires may be there, but our wills may not carry us through.  The Lord will not twist our arms and make us do anything.  He will always wait patiently on us to choose to do what He asks. He will also wait for us to do the things we know He wants us to do because we know His nature.

The Lord wants us to know Him well enough so that we can know the desires He has for us. He wants us to match our own desires for ourselves with His desires for us. He wants our talk for us to match His talk of us.

Then He wants us to love Him enough so that we can discipline ourselves and our will to allow His will to rule in our lives.  He wants us to choose to act in ways that allow His actions for our lives to take priority over the actions we would otherwise take for ourselves.  He wants our walk for ourselves to be submissive to His walk for us.

In the book of Psalms, we have many examples where our desires are aligned with God’s desires for us.  Psalm 139:24 says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart.  Try me and know my anxieties.  And see if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Search me and try me are statements of our desires and of our talk. We hope that our desires and our talk will match His desires and the talk He has for us.  But desires and talk are not enough.  We must be willing to walk.  We must be willing to submit our wills to the actions and plans God wants to take.

Our wills are of no real eternal value to us unless we are willing to submit to the walk God will lay out for us.  If in our desires God finds anything wicked or harmful to us lurking within us, we must be willing to free ourselves from ourselves so that we walk the path He will direct us to take.

God does in fact give us the freedom to choose to be free of the desires and wills we would have for ourselves and to accept the desires and will He has for us.  If you want your talk and your walk to align with the talk and the walk He has planned for you, ask the Lord to help you free yourself from yourself.

Perhaps trading your will for His will for you is the best expression of your free will.  Free will frees you from the bondage you are held to when you live by your will alone. 

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

Smarter choices come more easily when you are wise enough to wait for understanding.

The wise and the understanding. That is my message today.

In the book of Daniel, chapter 2:20-21, Daniel praises God by saying, “Blessed be the name of God forever and ever.  For wisdom and might are His.  And He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.”

Daniel singles out the fact that God does something specific for the wise and for the understanding.  He gives them wisdom and He gives them knowledge. It seems a bit unusual that someone who is already wise and understanding would be given even more.  But that’s exactly what God does.

What makes us wise and understanding is our ability to listen to someone greater than ourselves and to listen to things higher than the things we think of.  Perhaps Daniel is saying, God wants us to first listen to Him and next to listen to people who listen to Him.

If you are only going to listen to yourself, you better make sure you are wise and understanding or you may be listening to foolishness.  And if you are going to listen to others, you better make sure they listen to the One who can make them wise and understanding or you may be listening to the ignorant.

To whom much is given, God gives more.  He does this with those who are the wise and the understanding. So, how do we find these wise and understanding people?  Well, don’t look at what they do, look at who they are. The wise and the understanding are states of being.  They are known for being different, which is the reason the things they do are better than the things we do.

Listening to someone smarter than you are is one of the key attributes of those of us who are wise and understanding.  The wise and the understanding will listen to God more than you and I will listen to Him. Why is this so? Well, it’s because more of us live foolishly with what we know, and we are ignorant of the things we should know.  We lack wisdom and we lack knowledge.

We see our lives primarily consisting of the things we do and not the persons we are. The wise and the understanding are known for their persons; the foolish and the ignorant are known for what they do. The wise and the understanding are listeners for the Lord; they want to hear and to understand.  The foolish and the ignorant are listeners of themselves; they want to be heard and to be understood by others.

Both wisdom and knowledge are needed for the specific moment in time that you are in today.  Wisdom is knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do and knowledge is having the awareness of something that you ought not to be aware of yet.

Wisdom and knowledge are more about knowing and understanding yourself better, so that you know and understand other things more. Many of us live failing to realize the things God has reserved for us because we do not live as wise and understanding people.  Just like a parent doesn’t raise a child to be a failure in life, God did not create us to leave us to be failures.

But Daniel made it clear that God does not give His wisdom and knowledge to those of us who are foolish and without understanding. Before David became king of Israel, king Saul tried to kill him because of hatred and jealously. At times, David did not know what to do because he did not know what the next situation with Saul would bring.  But in 1 Samuel 18:14 the bible says, “David behaved wisely in all his ways, and the Lord was with him.”

David may not have known what to do but he knew that he should behave in a way that would not make the situation worse.  He behaved in a way that glorified God and so the glory of God’s goodness was reflected on him.  He was not foolish, as he understood himself so he knew what he could expect from Saul.  David had wisdom and knowledge because he was wise and understanding.

You may be in situations today where you do not know what to do.  You may be praying for an answer to something that is vexing you. Until your answer comes, learn to live wisely and with understanding.  Watch your behavior and wait for the Lord to move before moving and doing anything of your own thinking.

The bible says if you ask the Lord for wisdom He will give it to you.  But now you know that if you live wisely and with understanding, you position yourself to have His gift of wisdom and knowledge more easily.

A wise and understanding person will not make things more difficult while waiting for the knowledge of what to do. Smarter choices come more easily when we are wise enough to wait for understanding. Being wise and understanding will help you make better choices about the things you do, and it will keep you from being foolish and ignorant.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

Because Jesus did not stay dead, believers in Him will not stay dead either.

Mark 16:44-45 says this about Jesus’ death.  “Pilate marveled that He was already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him if He had been dead for some time.  So, when he found out from the centurion, He granted the body to Joseph.”

Now, Jesus had been on the cross for just around six hours so this quick death was puzzling to Pilate. To be sure of his death, Pilate asked the Roman Centurion charged with carrying out the crucifixion to confirm that Jesus was dead.  Pilate was saying to himself “dead so soon.  They thought He was a king.”

What Pilate and the Jews who wanted Jesus dead didn’t realize is that Jesus would not stay dead.  They thought His death would be the end of His life just as it was for any other person before Him.  They soon learned how wrong they were. Because on the third day after His death, Jesus got up and walked out of the grave.

Jesus did not stay dead. Why not?  Because nothing that is dead can do the work of something that must be done in life. Jesus had to do the work of Life for you and me, so death could not keep Him from that work.

The Jewish leaders at the time wanted to keep the people discouraged and dependent on the leaders for what hope they could have. They wanted to put a stop to the idea of independence from the law and direct access to God that Jesus was bringing to ordinary people. They claimed He had to be stopped because He was misleading the people to believe in something other than the Jewish laws.

His crucifixion, however, was not the final nail in His life.  His death was the final nail in the door that God had opened so that all who believes in Jesus can always walk through to eternal life.  His death was the final nail needed to keep something open more than to keep something closed.  The Jewish leaders thought that killing Jesus would solve all their problems.  The only problem with this thinking is that Jesus did not stay dead.

In Isaiah 42, God tells us of His plan for Jesus.  He refers to Jesus as His Servant whom He upholds and as His Elect One in whom His soul delights.  He says He has put His Spirit upon Jesus.  And He says Jesus will bring forth justice to the gentiles.  Jesus did not stay dead because He had the eternal work of life to do for us.

The religious leaders of the time got things wrong about Jesus and life just as we do today. They attempted to break what could not be broken and they attempted to fix what they could not fix.

By killing Him they thought they would:

• Silence Him.  They did not realize that Jesus would come to life in the hearts and minds and voices of every believer and that the rocks would cry out in praise of Him.  The voice of One became the voice of a multitude that could not be counted.

• Discredit Him.  They wanted to prove Him to be an imposter and not a Savior.  Instead, they ignited praise and honor in the hearts of every believer, proving Him to be even more than they thought.

• Punish Him.  They wanted to judge Him harshly to set an example for others.  Instead, they misjudged Him badly and brought eternal punishment upon themselves.

• Stop Him.  They wanted to end His influence with the people.  Instead, they sealed forever His love for the people and their love for Him.

• Kill Him.  They thought killing Him would mean the people would no longer have anything to hope for in Him.  But He didn’t stay dead.  He walked out of the grave and into the hearts of every believer.

Because He did not stay dead, God had the sacrifice He required for all people to be forgiven for their sins. Jesus did not stay dead.  And when we believe in Him, we do not stay dead.  Because He did not stay dead, we can have what the devil has always tried to keep us from having – eternal life.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

The Grace of the Lord is always there to heal our hurts or to carry us through the things that hurt.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul asked the Lord three times to remove an infirmity he had. The Lord’s response to Paul is captured in 2 Corinthians 12:9. It says, “And He said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”  Paul’s response to this was to boast in his weaknesses so that the Power of God could be alive in Him.

We commonly accept that grace is the unmerited favor or kindness of God poured out on us. So, what did the Lord mean by saying His grace was sufficient for Paul?  Was His grace sufficient to heal Paul? Or was His grace sufficient to sustain Paul in the event he was not healed?

Grace is indeed the unmerited favor of the Lord. But it doesn’t mean we get to live free of something that challenges our lives as much as it means we are freed to live abundantly with our challenges.  Read the account of this in 2 Corinthians for yourself.  It is not clear whether the Lord healed Paul or not.  Most of us believe Paul was not healed.

But whether healed or not, the Lord wants us to understand the sufficiency and the power of His grace. Grace is grace whether the Lord gives us what we ask in prayer or whether He chooses not to give us what we ask.  Paul was actually sick from being sick with his infirmity. Jesus used the healing power of His grace to heal the sickness Paul had caused by having this infirmity that he wanted to be removed.

I believe the Lord wants to do the same thing with us. Sometimes, the Lord will not give us exactly what we request in prayer.  But He will always give us something better than what we ask.  His grace is sufficient for us either way.  When we are sick of being challenged, grace will carry us through.

The grace of God is one of the primary ways the Lord is able to help us build up our faith in Him.  The unmerited kindness of the Lord causes us to be thankful to Him in the good times and in the bad times.

When we are pressed down by the challenges we face, the grace of the Lord keeps us from feeling like we are overcome by our troubles.  Grace may not remove our troubles, but it keeps us from allowing our troubles to make us become sick as we long for the goodness of life.

When we are anxious about the things we cannot control, the grace of the Lord helps us to learn never to lose control of ourselves as we live in Him.

When we are hurt or attacked by someone or something, the grace of the Lord helps us to find the good that is hidden in evil that is directed towards.  Grace helps us to stand strong against evil with the good that is only found in the Lord.

When we lack little, grace keeps us from becoming proud of having much.  And when we have much, grace keeps us humble enough to know that there are many who have nothing at all.

Grace keeps us from falling into the belief that we are better than others.  It keeps us from having the attitude that sometimes others must get what they deserve so they will learn to change their ways.  Indeed, grace may cause some of us to change our ways, but to many it will help us to change our perspectives about the Power of God.

So then, does the power of God rest on us in our strengths or in our weaknesses?  In both.  If the Lord gives us all that we want always, grace can help us learn to appreciate the Love of God.  If the Lord never gives us the things that we ask, the grace of the Lord can help us appreciate the power of God to carry us through our challenges.

Learn to recognize the grace of the Lord in your life.  It is sufficient for all that you encounter each day. The Grace of the Lord is always with us to heal us or to see us through what challenges us.

God is eternal. This means He has no beginning and no end.

The Word is God and God is the Word.

John 1:1 gives us an account of our beginning. It says this:

“In the beginning was the Word,

And the Word was with God.

And the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things were made through Him,

And without Him nothing was made that was made.”

Before there was a beginning, God and His Word existed. It is important for us to understand this.  You and I could not exist if we were made by something that itself has its own beginning. We are unique in this way. Something that has always existed decided to create us so that we may exist. We all have a beginning, but God does not.

It has to be this way because God had to create what we know as the beginning. If we could establish the beginning of God, it is possible we could argue the existence of God. This scripture speaks of the eternality of God and of His Word. He existed before existence was possible.

This is what it means to say God is eternal and everlasting. To be eternal means something that has a beginning cannot establish a start time for something that always is and always was and always will be. This too is important to you because anything that has a beginning will have an end. We can be assured to know that God will never stop being God.

And where other gods must have a beginning and thus an end, our God exists in eternity so that we may have eternal life with Him.  So, knowing all this, we ought to be moved to run to Him and to live close to Him in every way.

Here are some things we can count on that should make us run to His presence every day and always:

Even though God has no beginning, we can count on the fact that His Word has always existed fully and in total. Nothing can be added to it, nor can anything be removed from it. Run to it.

His Word came from Him as did the knowledge He wants us to know about Him. Nothing about His existence came to us from a scholar or highly educated person. His Word will never change, and it can never be changed. Run to it.

Just as we can know the monetary amount of a coin by looking at either side, we can know God by looking to Jesus, and we can know Jesus by looking to God because the Word was God Himself and God was the Word. Both these facts are true and not contradictory. Run to it.

God made His Word to become flesh in the form of Jesus. And In Jesus, everything we know and even the things we do not know was made by Him. We can count on knowing where all things came from. Run to it.

These are truths and realities of life that should help us to better understand the amazing God we have. Knowing these things should help us understand why we should run to Him and never run from Him.

We should know life is contained in Him and never in ourselves. We should know that without Him we face a certain end with our end. But with Him our end is always contained in His eternal existence.

Let’s run to Him.  Our heritage is found in Him. He is our beginning. He is our savior. He is our redeemer. He is our God.

God has no history that can be found. But He makes it so that we can find His presence with us always. Because of this we should run to Him.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

Learn to look at what you see through the eyes and the Word of God more than through your eyes and your own understanding.

Romans 4:3 says this: “Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”

Sometimes we do not see things as they really are because we look at things through the dirty lens of our own desires. Many years ago, I learned that it was better for me to allow the Word of God to read my life back to me and to tell me what it finds.  As much as I want to read the Word and to understand the Word, it is better for me to listen to what the Word says it finds in me.

If you listen more to what the Lord has to say about you then you will learn to live more like He wants you to live. Abraham did this.  He listened to what God said to him and then he acted out in ways that demonstrated his belief in what God wanted.

Abraham did not have to fit God’s desires to his action.  Abraham looked at the world through the eyes of God so that his actions fit with what God said.  Abraham turned things around.  Many of us should turn things around.  We want to believe what we see and do and then we look to find validation of that in God’s Word.   We should look to believe and see all of God’s Word and then we would see what that says about the things we see and do.

But this is difficult for many of us to understand and to do. We read the bible like we would read a newspaper.  Our objective is to learn what happened today so we can be informed. But we cannot learn how to live better by reading the newspaper because the newspaper is not an authority on life – especially not our lives.

The Lord wants to help us learn to live abundant lives but to do that we must be willing to change how we approach learning about the Lord.  We must turn things around.  More than reading and handling what the scripture says, we should turn things around so that the scripture handles who we are so that we can be who we should be.

In Hebrews 4:12 scripture also says that the “Word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Many of us miss the understanding and the discernment found in this scripture.

The Word is living; it is not dead nor is it fiction.  Since it is living, we ought to allow the living to read the dead things in our lives and to tell us what it finds.

The Word is powerful and sharper than even the sharpest sword.  Since it is sharp, we should allow it to cut through our own thoughts and through our own ideas of how we should view life so that we can see clearly the life God wants us to live.

The Word is a discerner of our thoughts and intents.  Since the Word knows us better than we know ourselves, we should be happy to have the truth of our lives revealed to us by the righteousness of the Word.

None of this will happen and none of this will matter unless we learn to turn things around so that the Word tells us what it finds about us as it relates to how we should think, act and live.  We will get off track the more we try to look at things with what we think we know about the Word.

We must turn things around.  We can never the sharper than the Word.  We can never be more powerful than the Word.  We can never be a discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the Word the way the Word is to us.

Today, why don’t you commit to turn things around?  When you open your eyes make sure you are looking first at the Word.  It should be the first thing and the filter through which you see anything else.  When you do that, the Word will tell you how you should think, act and live out what you see.

Lord, we want and need You to turn us around to see what You see more than to see what we want to see.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

Learn to listen to people who are smarter than you are, that will make you smarter than you are.

Many of us find it difficult to look for or to listen to people who are smarter than we are. That is because we do not like taking advice from others and we fail to realize the value of the wisdom found in others.  We don’t appreciate learning from others about the things we don’t know yet.

It is our pride and our foolishness that keep us from learning from others.  And it is our lack of humility that keeps us from knowing that we may not know all that is best for our lives. Do you know how fast an eagle can fly or how fast a deer can run?  Probably not.  Those are not things we just typically know.

It is our pride and our foolishness that would tell us we do not need to know that.  And our lack of humility would keep us from learning those things from others. Since the beginning of time, man has had problems listening to others who are smarter. But God wants us to be different.

Proverbs 23:12 tells us to “Apply your heart to instruction, and your ears to words of knowledge.” This is saying for us to be intentional in looking for the ways you should live and to always listen for the knowledge of things you do not know. Many of us will not do this because our foolishness and our pride will keep us from hearing the wisdom of this proverb.

Proverbs 23:22 says “listen to your father who begot you, and do not despise your mother when she is old.”  Be intentional in seeking to hear what your parents have to say and make it a point to desire their advice. But we do not like taking the advice of others, even our parents, as much as we want to give advice to others.

There is always someone stronger than you. There will always be someone better at this thing than you are.  There will always be someone who can run faster than you can. And there will always be someone smarter at life than you are. The wise and the prudent person in you would seek to find those people and to learn from them.

Do not allow your pride to keep you from learning the difference and importance between advice and wisdom. In Exodus 18:19, Moses’ father-in-law gave him some advice when he said, “Listen now to my voice; I will give you counsel, and God will be with you.”  Moses was humble enough to take that advice.  He listened.

In Exodus 18:17, Moses father-in-law shared some wisdom with Moses when he said, “The thing you do is not good. Both you and these people who are with you will surely wear yourselves out. For this thing is too much for you and you are not able to perform it by yourself.”

Moses was not offended by this wisdom as he listened to his father-in-law who could see where his actions would be harmful to the people and to Moses. Understanding comes more easily to us when we learn to listen to and to take the advice of others.

Realize that listening to others does not mean you are allowing others to run your life.  It simply means you are smart enough to allow others to help you see more about your life and others.

Not listening to others smarter than you will leave you to only listen to yourself. When you only listen to yourself or to those you believe are not as smart as you, there will be no way for you to correct yourself when you give yourself bad advice.

If you are not willing to listen to what others have to say about you, perhaps you should wonder if others should listen to what you have to say about them.

Learn to first listen to the Lord. Then learn to listen to those who are smarter than you are. This will make you smarter than you are.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

The Lord test’s you for what you can become more than for what you know.

In all my schooling, I must admit that I never liked to hear the words, “there will be a test on this topic later.”  I don’t know of anyone who really likes to take tests.  Tests mean that you must study, apply yourself, learn, and you must change your ways.  I have never liked that.

In our carnal life, passing our tests is the way we know if we are ready to handle the challenges that will come at us later in life.  Knowledge of the coming test causes us to study and to apply ourselves so we can show what we know about the material we study.

Though we may hate being tested, tests are in many ways good for us.  And in a bigger way, life itself is a test that God gives us.  But unlike our carnal lives, God does not test us for what we have learned; He tests us for what we become because of what we learn.

The book of Psalms has a lot to say about what we can become.  Psalm 139:23-24 says this: “Search me O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”

There are many ways and things in life that will test our faith in the Lord. But here in this Psalm are several tests that can help you strengthen your faith and your belief so that you may live a more blessed and fulfilled life with the Lord.

First learn to go before and to live before the Lord always.  Ask Him to continually put you through the “search me” test.  You won’t get a passing or failing grade, but you will get righteous insight from the only One who can accurately search you and tell you the truth about you.  Ask the Lord to search you.

Then ask Him for the “know me” test.  What you learn from what He knows about you will help you change so that you can overcome the things that will surely test who you are and who you should be.  No one knows you better than the Lord.  So ask Him for the “know me test.”

Then comes the “try me” test.  This is where the Lord will help you see where you are strongest and where you are weakest.  He will help you to know yourself a little better than what you will think and say to yourself about yourself.  When He tries you, He will strengthen and refine you where you need it.  Ask Him for the “try me” test.

You will want Him to put you through the “see me” test.  With the see me test, the Lord will put you through the drills of life to see how much of His life He has worked into your life.  He may use marriage, parenthood, humility, service, or even the presence of selflessness in you as see me tests.  Whatever He uses, you will be able to accurately see what He is seeing.

And finally, He will put you through the “lead me” test.  All the tests before will mean little if you do not allow yourself to be put through the test of whether you can be led by someone other than yourself.  When the Lord puts you through the “lead me” test, He promises to be your leader.  But the lead me test will also reveal if you will be able to lead yourself so that you can follow when you should follow.

The test with the Lord is not whether you will pass or fail.  The test is whether you will allow yourself to be tested and strengthened in His ways more than in the ways of your own.

Lord, test my heart, test my anxieties, test my ways and test my submission to Your leadership so that I may be led in the way everlasting.  This is a test we should gladly want to take.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.